Analysts have suggested hardware shortages shoulder part of the blame for industry sales shortfalls over the past few months -- but retailer GameStop says constraints for PlayStation 3 are severe.
On the company's quarterly results call to investors, chief operating officer Paul Raines said that in its stores, PS3s have been out of stock a surprising 80 percent of the time during the company's February-April quarter.
In April, PS3 unit sales were up 32 percent year-over-year, but at 181,000 units per month, it's still a smaller volume than many analysts expect.
Sony has alluded to its difficulty getting supply to retailers as a reason for the drop-off, but such severe constraints as illustrated by GameStop may help explain why the console has gone from selling 90,000 systems per week in February to only 45,000 systems per week in April.
Nintendo's Wii still faces constraints, too -- Raines said the Wii was out of stock at GameStop stores 50 percent of the time.
Those supply constraints challenged GameStop's own performance, and the company attributes a 1.6 year-over-year decline in comparable store sales to hardware shortages.
A couple of months ago I had a total impulse to pick up a PS3 finally, since a few of the games coming out that week really interested me, but after checking half a dozen online and local sites, I simply couldn't find one for sale. The feeling has since passed and I likely won't even consider one until the next price drop. I have to wonder how many other potential sales like myself they lost.
Although I'm not questioning the reliability of the source...I find it extremely hard to believe that a company like Sony can not ship 45,000 units per week of a console that's been around for several years and the most recent sku has been around 6 months. Seems very suspicious to me...then again maybe Sony were being modest in their expectations for the slim.
I suggest we all read Penny Arcade again when Sony had "PS3-shortages" when Tretton boldy stated "I'll pay you 1200 dollar if you find a PS3 in stores".
At least Sony now learned from the past...let's actually make a shortage now!
Last month I was shocked when a friend called asking if I knew anywhere that stocked PS3s. I called a dozen stores myself before I found one that had 1 left in stock.
I mean, if that was what Nintendo was doing those first two and a half years, surely Sony is doing the exact same thing.
@kevin @Ephriam
Funny enough by the 2 comments one may deduce that this strategy worked for the Wii but not the PS3!
At least Sony now learned from the past...let's actually make a shortage now!